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[Endomatic]

What is the most efficient way to build a danger room?

How large? Any specific size that works best to get whole squads in?

I made one that was 4x4 and I still had trouble getting all 10 in.

At first it was great because they had steel armor and shields.

Then I decided I wanted more dodge armor and weapon training, and removed the shields. I lost a lot of very skilled dodgers and armor users on wooden training spears. Is it because they fell asleep or something? With a shield, I had a dwarf sleep through about 20 rotations.

How many spears per trap should I use? 1? I've been using 3.

[Makigall]

I'll usually mark of about a 7x5 room and fill it with training spears attached to a couple of levers in my dining hall.  Each square is loaded with 5 training spears.  I'll start off each squad with full steel armor and their weapons.  Once the weapons get to legendary I let them have shields.  With this setup I can generally turn any dwarf into a legendary warrior in a season. 

Right next to the danger room is a room with screw pumps pumping nothing.  Any new recruits with no skills worth speaking of is a pump operator and they'll work those pumps until they pass out.  This is mostly to prevent a bad thought from happening whenever they go off duty.  This way they're something other than a peasant.

[shlorf]

Economic design:

Code: [Select]

WWW
RDS
WWWW = wall
R = weapon rack /any barracks building
D = door set to external and locked
S = upright spear trap, 10 training spears loaded
Designate barracks from the weapon rack and resize the room so it extends just on the trap. Set squads to train there after you locked the door. This will only need 4 mechanism and one linking job.

[malimbar04]

Economic design:

Code: [Select]

WWW
RDS
WWWW = wall
R = weapon rack /any barracks building
D = door set to external and locked
S = upright spear trap, 10 training spears loaded
Designate barracks from the weapon rack and resize the room so it extends just on the trap. Set squads to train there after you locked the door. This will only need 4 mechanism and one linking job.

Unfortunately this requires micromanagement - a lot of it. If you don't want to lock the door every time a squad wants to train, you need the training room designated in the same room at the spear traps. Thus:
WWW
W R W
W | W
W D W
Is more efficient from a management perspective. Space and part efficiency is right here.

However, I like to have more of the squares used be for actual training, not 1/2 of them.
I prefer to have a 3x3 room (8/9 effective), though a 2x3 room should work really well too (4/5 effective).

WWWWW
W |  | | W
W | R | W
W |  | | W
WWDWW

WWWWW
W | R | W
W |  | | W
WWDWW

with whatever location you want for the lever.
Oh, and the more spears you have the more dangerous and effective the danger room is. If it's linear difficulty and risk (I don't know), I'd say pack them full of 10 spears each. However, do not go without shields, that's just crazy man.

[Nameless Archon]

What is the most efficient way to build a danger room?

Depends on the size of the squads being trained, but technically, it can be done with a 1x1 tile like this:

Code: [Select]

OOOOOOOOO
OaDX++++
OOOOOOOOO

Where: O = wall
a = armor stand
D = door (internal, forbidden, pet-impassible)
X = Upright Spike Trap (fill with wood training spears)
+ = door (external, pet impassible).
Make the doors before the spikes pet-impassible, and the door between spikes and armor stand needs to be forbidden AND internal. then create a barracks room from the armor stand and enlarge it to cover the spike tile. This makes all dwarves stand in the same 1x1 space.

How large? Any specific size that works best to get whole squads in?

For style reasons, I go 3x3 for the spike room, but the only limits are mechanisms/materials and patience. If the room is defined as a barracks properly, squads will pack themselves into the room on their training schedule.

I made one that was 4x4 and I still had trouble getting all 10 in.

Make sure you're defining the spike room as a barracks, and the dwarves will pack themselves in to train.

Then I decided I wanted more dodge armor and weapon training, and removed the shields. I lost a lot of very skilled dodgers and armor users on wooden training spears. Is it because they fell asleep or something? With a shield, I had a dwarf sleep through about 20 rotations.

1. Are you sure you used trining spears and not menacing spikes? I've never lost an adult dwarf to a danger room, though I've lost children to inattentiveness.

2. Make sure you have a robe or claok assigned to dwarves to cover their necks and other "odd" body parts. Training spears CAN kill, if they hit a vulnerable spot with no armor, but even a cloth robe will protect them. I typically use leather robes, as this gives me something besides quivers and backpacks to do with all of those hides...

How many spears per trap should I use? 1? I've been using 3.

Season to taste. 1 spear is the minimum, 10 the max. 10 will produce an absurdly fast training rate (10 attacks to deal with per frame) but this is seen as exploitative by some. I usually go with four or five in a small room (3x3), both to reduce the number of spears and mechanisms, and to keep the training rate somewhat reasonable.

[Rask]

Just designate a 1x1 burrow, put a ten-spike-trap in it, and order your squad to guard that burrow.

Space used: 2 (1 for burrow, one for lever)
Mechanisms used: 3
Training spears used: 10

I don't think it's possible to get much more efficient than that.

[LilGunmanX]

Hey guys, I know there are different opinions on this matter, but I have an honest, un-loaded question to ask concerning danger rooms:

Is it really possible to have an effective military without one of these?

I've played with danger rooms before, and suddenly military was actually... effective. Too effective. They were killing everything effortlessly. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing... but since there's no difficulty slider in DF, it almost felt like there was no longer a challenge and I lost interest in the fort. However, that being said, the game feels bloody well near unplayable without a danger room! The dwarves just train too damn slowly to ever amount to a single thing and get brutalized unless they're at least 40 in number and completely clad in adamant armor, and even then there is still the great risk of putting an untrained soldier into combat with an FB Am I doing something wrong? My schedules are set to train all the year-round, yet not a thing is accomplished.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I use a 3x3 danger room (4x4 if I have a really large military) and tell my dwarves to defend the burrow I set up inside it.

[malimbar04]

Hey guys, I know there are different opinions on this matter, but I have an honest, un-loaded question to ask concerning danger rooms:

Is it really possible to have an effective military without one of these?

Yes, particularly if you have a decently defensible fort. With one-year legendary dwarves you can recklessly send them off to slaughter sieges alone. With mediocre trained dwarves you have to instead rely on tactics. Crossbow dwarves become more useful behind your fortifications. Alternating walls to prevent clear shots prevents goblins from attacking your melee dwarves well, and choke-points help your dwarves attack the goblins many to one. Making lock-down rooms of bridge-walls also helps, though the return of goblinite is significantly less in this case.

[slothen]

From what I can tell, demonstrations are somewhat effective once the teacher has some skill above novice.  I think the best way would involve naked prisoners pitted into a room of armored dwarves armoed with wooden training weapons.  You can get them quite a few skill levels doing this.  The one thing I've noticed is that the teacher skill improves very very slowly.   Next fort I want to try embarking with at least 2 drill instructors and small squads and see how well it goes.

[Endomatic]

I actually put one point into teacher into the guy I plan to have as my Militia Commander.

Thanks for the info everyone.

Can anyone explain why they might straight up die to training spears just because they had no shields? I put training spears on repeat (at the carpenter). The room was the first military oriented thing I've made, so I don't have many other weapons available. I made sure not to use menacing spikes. I didn't make any.

My dwarves were actually killed by legendary training spears

Could the legendary-ness of the spears be the cause?

They dodge or reflect everything and then BANG Spear through the skull

[shlorf]

Weapons get damage modifiers from quality levels, x2 for masterworks and x3 for artifacts. To ensure no more soldiers get impaled make sure they have leather cloaks and/or mail shirts (breastplates and helms don't protect the throat afaik) and use a dabbling carpenter to make no quality spears.

[shlorf]

Economic design:

Code: [Select]

WWW
RDS
WWWW = wall
R = weapon rack /any barracks building
D = door set to external and locked
S = upright spear trap, 10 training spears loaded
Designate barracks from the weapon rack and resize the room so it extends just on the trap. Set squads to train there after you locked the door. This will only need 4 mechanism and one linking job.

Unfortunately this requires micromanagement - a lot of it. If you don't want to lock the door every time a squad wants to train, you need the training room designated in the same room at the spear traps. Thus:

No, you didn't understand how it works. The door is locked so the soldiers cannot get to the barracks building. The building is only used to extend the room right onto the trap which is the only reachable tile of the room. 100% (-dodging) on trap guaranteed.

[slothen]

Weapons get damage modifiers from quality levels, x2 for masterworks and x3 for artifacts.

I'm almost sure its a hit/accuracy modifier and has nothing to do with penetration or damage.

I actually put one point into teacher into the guy I plan to have as my Militia Commander.

do 5 or you're wasting your time.

Can anyone explain why they might straight up die to training spears just because they had no shields? I put training spears on repeat (at the carpenter). The room was the first military oriented thing I've made, so I don't have many other weapons available. I made sure not to use menacing spikes. I didn't make any.

My dwarves were actually killed by legendary training spears

Could the legendary-ness of the spears be the cause?

They dodge or reflect everything and then BANG Spear through the skull

shields give them a chance to block, if they died without the shields they could have died with them as well.  I've never seen an armored or even merely clothed dwarf take a single scratch from danger rooms, and I regularly use exceptional and masterwork training spears and exceptional mechanisms.  The only explanation i can imagine is that they had nothing covering their head, clothes or armor.

[Hans Lemurson]

Judging from the combat logs of Pets that get caught in Danger-Rooms, I would conclude that training spears will NOT kill a conscious creature.  When a lucky blow STUNS, then the creature stops dodging, and then they get battered to death.